[Ezra Pound] worked on and for poetry as others might work on a major scientific discovery or a drawn-out military mission. Thus, as Sieburth reminds us in his introduction to The Pisan Cantos, when, on May 3, 1945, Pound was arrested at his home in the hills above Rapallo, he immediately put a small Chinese dictionary and a copy of the Confucian classics in his pocket. Working as he then was on his Confucian translations, he knew that, wherever the military police were taking him, he would need these books.

NPR is reporting that Supreme Court Justice David Souter will retire at the end of the current Court term, pending the approval of a replacement to be appointed by President Obama. Appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, Souter's replacement will presumably maintain the balance of ascribed "left-leaning" to "right-leaning" justices at 4-5, but will increase the number of justices on the bench appointed by a Democratic president to 3. At 69, Souter is in fact the youngest of the so-called "left-leaning" justices currently on the bench.posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:29 PM PST - 113 comments

Steel Town is a pretty cool little film made in 1944 highlighting Youngstown, Ohio's steel industry and it's workers. The shots inside the mill are amazing. Now, much like other old steel towns, Youngstown is working to make a come back in new waysposted by nnk at 9:21 AM PST - 11 comments

Music Journalist David Stubbs has a new book exploring why when the audience for modern art is huge, that for new music is tiny. The BBC, has an article about this with an interview with the author and some sound samples.posted by ob at 9:01 AM PST - 34 comments

April 29

"The ability to convey the depths of despair, the heights of jubilation and the serenity of an abiding faith are all that is required to be known as “The Voice.” Unfortunately, very few possess the ability to do all that and what’s more unfortunate, we lost one of those few–possibly the best of those few–with the death of Vern Gosdin at the age of 74." [more inside]posted by dawson at 11:31 PM PST - 7 comments

Chroma Circuit a color matching game for you to enjoy. Each level has you matching facets on squares or triangles, playing against a par move. The rules are simple, but complexity ramps up fast.posted by boo_radley at 5:59 PM PST - 24 comments

The wait is over! Random House will publish Vladimir Nabokov's unfinished novel, The Original of Laura: (Dying Is Fun), on November 3, 2009, with "removable facsimiles of the index cards" on which the novel was written. As previously discussed on MetaFilter, Dmitri Nabokov's decision to publish the unfinished novel against his father's wishes has been controversial, but the BBC has already called it the "literary event of 2009".posted by Houyhnhnm at 5:16 PM PST - 58 comments

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos H. Papadimitriou, Alecos Papadatos, and Annie Di Donna.
Covering a span of sixty years, the graphic novel Logicomix was inspired by the epic story of the quest for the Foundations of Mathematics. This is another kind of epic battle that does not quite lead where the characters thought it would take them. Featuring Bertrand Russell as narrator and the awesome might of the villain (of sorts) Incompleteness. Themes include the high personal price paid for knowledge.posted by incompressible at 4:42 PM PST - 24 comments

"It's not about hate, it's about love. Love of white people. That's the message in songs, speeches and casual conversation during a weekend retreat in Zinc, Ark., sponsored by the Christian Revival Center and the Knights Party, an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. There's no overt threat of violence here. No cross burnings (or "lightings," as the KKK prefers to call them). The only fire at the grassy compound, located at the end of a long, rocky road circled by turkey vultures, is a bonfire for the Knights youth corps to roast their s'mores. The kids draw pictures of white-hooded Klanspeople and sing songs about the oppressed Aryan race; rousing sermons are read from Bibles decorated with Confederate flags. Aryan souvenirs are for sale, including baseball caps proclaiming IT'S LOVE, NOT HATE and advertising THE ORIGINAL BOYZ IN THE HOOD."posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 3:24 PM PST - 114 comments

Given all the attention the new Star Trek movie is generating, it's not surprising that the porn industry is attempting to cash in (SFW). What is surprising is that the production team clearly knows their Star Trek (SFW). Hustler's "This Ain't Star Trek XXX" appears to be a send-up of the classic Trek episode "Space Seed," (heh... space seed). In addition to the reasonable-for-porn casting of Kirk, Spock, and Bones (heh... bones), Hustler takes the effort to be faithful to even the minor characters and costumes (SFW).posted by Jon_Evil at 10:53 PM PST - 56 comments

Three years ago, David Nixon took over the principalship at John C. Calhoun Elementary School. "Thirty minutes into his first day of school at John C, a father walked into Nixon's office and said, 'I want to give you the authority to whip my son's butt.' Nixon was surprised, but after he thought it over, he decided to give every parent the same option." Did corporal punishment save a struggling school?[more inside]posted by jeeves at 2:00 PM PST - 160 comments

Women in Photography — WIPNYC presents a solo exhibition of work from select photographers every couple weeks so viewers can discover and enjoy the work of female artists. [some nsfw images]posted by netbros at 10:24 AM PST - 4 comments

Home of the Double-Headed Eagle is a short film by Ali Colleen Neff and Brian Graves, featuring the kaleidoscopic work of visionary architecture created by Reverend H. D. Dennis and his wife, Margaret Dennis.posted by hermitosis at 10:00 AM PST - 2 comments

Craig Murray (Previously: 12)
Attends the Formal Evidence Session on UK Complicity in Torture on Tuesday 28 April 1.45pm UK time.
You can (hopefully) watch it on Parliament TV.
If you want to have a good look at UK / US complicity in torture, this might be a good place to start...
Please note he has said "There is absolutely no way I am going to kill myself. Just thought it might be wise to get that out in public!". Hopefully statements like that won't be necessary.posted by debord at 5:57 AM PST - 9 comments

A Presidential Boeing 747 along with two fighter planes continuously circled jarringly close to the tops of buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City this morning. From the ground it looked as though a plane had been hijacked again, and the Air Force was attempting to force it down. Panic ensued.
Another terrorist attack?
No, just a top secretphoto op. [more inside]posted by stagewhisper at 6:09 PM PST - 207 comments

Photos from the Neverland Ranch auction A while ago, Michael Jackson was short of cash, and decided to auction off the contents of Neverland Ranch, his combined palace/fun park, down to the last vanity painting and statue. A guy named Paul Scheer went along with a camera, took photos of some of the more peculiar items and put them online. It's certainly a unique collection.posted by acb at 4:08 PM PST - 56 comments

By the time he was twenty years old, artist, writer, and adventurer Everett Ruess was paling around with Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams and had spent several years trekking around the southwest United States. In November 1934, Ruess left Escalante, Utah and disappeared - never to be seen again. Seventy-five years later, Ruess hasbeen found. (previously on MeFi)posted by quartzcity at 2:35 PM PST - 17 comments

Unemployment: good for the heart and the soul. "In studies over the past 10 years, Ruhm has consistently found death rates decline during recessions and rise when the economy expands. If unemployment rises 1 percent, he estimates the death rate will fall by about half a percent."posted by dersins at 11:13 AM PST - 38 comments

I left this here for you to read: You can't buy this magazine in bookstores, and you can't subscribe to it. If you do find an issue, it's purely by chance: each month, 50 issues are printed and left in public places across the US and Canada. Each free, collaboratively produced, handmade issue contains short articles, small greyscale images, and sometimes tiny flat objects attached to the pages. [more inside]posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:11 AM PST - 36 comments

You wake up. Yawn. Wipe the sleep and other detritus that may have accumulated from your eyes. God, last night sure rocked. But... what did you do? It's all kind of hazy. Something about a bottle of rum, a statue, and some clown portraits by Red Skelton. Or at least you hope they were portraits. You remember sending out some text messages... but you'll be damned if you remember what they were. That's where Texts From Last Night comes in. Now your very possibly true, but most likely fake, nocturnal e-missives live on in the imaginations of the rest of the world forever. Much like your shame.posted by tittergrrl at 11:09 AM PST - 45 comments

Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia, offers a radical proposal in The New York Times for the restructuring of the American university system. Two key components of the proposal entail ending tenure and shuttering academic departments—replacing disciplines with problems, and then tackling them with a cooperative and multidisciplinary approach, e.g. The Department of the Future of Water made up of geologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and ethicists. Should we End the University as We Know It?posted by Toekneesan at 9:41 AM PST - 84 comments

Self Portrait of the painter Tamara de Lempicka; Born Maria Gorska 1898 in Poland. Lempicka lived a Life of Deco and Decadence. Her portraits are known for mixing “lighting by Caravaggio, tubism by Fernand Léger and lipstick by Chanel”. Her Complete works are viewable as a slideshow. Criticised as portraying the dubious glamour and discipline of fascism; she became the most talked about Art Deco painter of her time; her erotic portraits are testaments of the glittering 1920's. Here is a reassessment (pdf). She died in 1980 and her ashes were scattered over the volcano Popocatepetl . (wiki) (some links nsfw) posted by adamvasco at 8:54 AM PST - 12 comments

Public Collectors is an eclectic archive of off-line and on-line collections to which anyone can contribute. It is "founded upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that public libraries, museums and other institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible." [more inside]posted by stbalbach at 6:03 AM PST - 9 comments

My gut reaction was that the story--although a legitimate consumer complaint—seemed to reinforce a cultural stereotype about Black people and chicken. I know for a fact that no one on our staff meant for that to be the point of the story, but the fear that we would be accused of this sounded an alarm to me. It’s sad that I even had to worry about this.

No matter their approach, the typical French physician who accepted the notion of male hysteria continued to think that its victims were in some way sexually abnormal: "Thus, despite Charcot's innovative work, the male victim of hysteria in late-nineteenth century French medical imagination was still frequently envisioned as an effeminate heterosexual, an overt homosexual, or a physical or emotional hermaphrodite." If not different sexually, male hysterics were said to be different in other ways, such as race or nationality, among whom African, African-American, south Asian, Arab, or Eastern European Jewish men predominated. Outside of France, other methods of denial appeared, such as the suggestion that male hysteria was restricted to Frenchmen. The medical literature of the time is full of evasions and denials and contradictions of the truths that Charcot had quite obviously demonstrated.

Zoom in to brush-stroke level detail of the masters at the World's First HD Online Art Exhibition. At SXSW 2009, France's Zoomorama showed off its latest collaboration with Bridgeman Art Library. So far the collection features the work of only three artists, but for those of us who like to make museum security nervous by getting really close, the results are pretty amazing, and the implications for future exhibitions are exciting. [Flash]posted by Rykey at 8:26 AM PST - 3 comments

Worth1000 arguably the best place for photoshops on the web, has released their newest creative effort...an online set of image (and eventually audio and video) tools called Aviary (a review here). And look at what it can do (when I looked, there was a three-mouthed monkey - that's definitely awesome)!posted by Kickstart70 at 7:14 AM PST - 11 comments

April 24

Did you guess wrong about which format would win the high-density disk war? Buy a lot of HD-DVDs? Warner Brothers has a special program now where they'll swap your WB HD-DVDs for Blu-Rays of the same titles for $5 each. [more inside]posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:47 PM PST - 50 comments

bio-bak is a little Monty Python, a little Hunter S. Thompson, and a whole lotta Katamari Damacy rolled up into an absurd little flash world. Updated from the version released in 2006.posted by anthropoid at 9:53 PM PST - 14 comments

Col. Steven Kleinman, interrogation specialist, was interviewed yesterday on NPR about the use of torture in Iraq:NPR: And these harsh interrogation methods had been used by the Soviets and the Chinese to get people to say things that weren't true? Kleinman:That's true. And it's not just harsh physically, but I think the element that was more persuasive was their ability to induce what is known as debility, depression and dread through emotional and psychological techniques that profoundly altered somebody's ability to answer questions truthfully even if they wanted to. It truly undermined their ability to recall, so therefore it would call into question its efficacy in an intelligence-based interrogation. [link] . [more inside]posted by mecran01 at 10:55 AM PST - 121 comments

The year is 1991. When a Gozer exhibit loaded with artifacts provided by the Shandors opens at the history museum in New York, it's not long before paranormal forces escape and sweep through the city. When the supernatural strikes back, who ya gonna call? Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson reunite for the upcoming Ghostbusters: The Video Game. The opening cinematic that kicks off the story has been released at GameTrailers, while the development teams working on the game discuss the project's origin and direction in a series of blog articles at IGN. [more inside]posted by Servo5678 at 9:18 AM PST - 65 comments

"After the success I had with my homebrew tonearm, I decided to build a turntable that is able to fathom the sonic delicacies that the tonearm is able to produce ... Depending on your local price for wood, and your ability to find some surplus parts, total cost can be as low as $50."posted by jim in austin at 5:20 AM PST - 28 comments

April 23

Soul! New York City PBS affiliate WNET have digitized 9 episodes of Soul!, a early 1970's live music program, providing a groovy video interface with chapters to break down each hour long episode. [more inside]posted by myopicman at 11:45 PM PST - 20 comments

Erwin James: the real me. Erwin James has written about prison for the Guardian for a number of years, from the point of view of an insider: when his column began, he was serving a sentence for two murders. He completed his sentence a few years ago, but continued to write under that name, a pseudonym.
Here, he talks about the crimes that he was originally imprisoned for, his time in the French Foreign Legion, how he became a writer during his time in prison, and gives his real name for the first time.posted by chorltonmeateater at 11:20 PM PST - 19 comments

Geocities may be on its way out, but you'll be glad to know the internet of 1998 it celebrated lives on in a strange mismash of bad hypertext and video of pornographic Poser 3D models at Dad-TV.com [NSFW].posted by sp160n at 9:25 PM PST - 8 comments

Are you a guy with an iPhone? Sent anyone a hot self-pic lately? You might want to check out Guys With iPhones (NSFW) to see if anyone has added you to the pool yet.posted by hermitosis at 7:04 PM PST - 121 comments

The American Hologram We suffer under a mass national hallucination. Americans, regardless of income or social position, now live in a culture entirely perceived inside a self-referential media hologram of a nation and world that does not exist. Our national reality is staged and held together by media, chiefly movie and television images. We live in a “theater state.”posted by idixon at 8:36 AM PST - 207 comments

War of the Roses These are trashy, but fun, 3-8 minute radio segments in which suspected cheaters are tricked into revealing their dirty sinful business over the phone. Typically, the DJ posing as a local flower shop tells a suspect boyfriend he has won a free bouquet of roses; will he send the roses to his girlfriend or to the dreaded Other Woman? The girlfriend waits in silence to ambush him if he gives the wrong answer. Some are sad. Some are infuriating. Most, I'm ashamed to say, are prettyfunny.posted by dgaicun at 6:03 AM PST - 91 comments

By high school, her name was cool to many. "They were like, 'Oh yeah. Man, I wish I had your name. I love that. I'm going to name my kid after you.' I hear that so much and I go, Lord, please don't do that to that child." --Marijuana Pepsi Jackson[via][more inside]posted by jaimev at 9:06 AM PST - 177 comments

"Everyman His Own Historian" is the annual address Carl Becker, President of the American Historical Association, delivered on December 29, 1931. It's probably the best thing I've ever read about history, and I thought I'd share it. It's long, but full of lively examples; I'll never forget the image of twenty tons of coal sliding dustily through Mr. Everyman's cellar window. (Via Slawkenbergius's Tales, the brilliant blog of MeFi's own nasreddin.)posted by languagehat at 9:04 AM PST - 15 comments

You can't buy a CycleKart and, even if you could, the racers wouldn't let you participate. You have to build your CycleKart. It's one of the many reasons this is a very cool hobby.posted by Tom-B at 6:43 AM PST - 35 comments

In September 1969, Simon & Schuster was preparing to publish Irving Wallace's The Seven Minutes, a novel about the obscenity trial of a fictitious book of the same name by the fictitious author J.J. Jadway. Maurice Girodias, head of the erotica and avant garde literature publishing house the Olympia Press had a clever idea: what if I publish Jadway's book?[more inside]posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:44 AM PST - 16 comments

"Our budget is $2 million dollars a year while a town of similar size, with 12,000 people, might have a budget of $10 million["], said City Director Frank Gassmere. Added Mayor Stranczek: "Folks are happy here and I intend to keep them that way."

Alone Among the Ghosts is an essay from The Nation by Marcela Valdez about Roberto Bolaño's 2666. She interviews journalist Sergio González Rodríguez, who has written extensively about the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez which is the black hole Bolaño's novel orbits around. The journalist was Bolaño's correspondent and main source of information about the femicides. The best English language article about the epidemic of violence in Ciudad Juárez I have read is Max Blumenthal's 2002 Salon article. The website No Angel Came is a good resource for more info on the subject, including a continually updated section with links to articles about the killings. The site's most arresting section is the list of every woman killed in Ciudad Juárez from 1993 to 2006. The epidemic of violence against women in Ciudad Juárez continues.posted by Kattullus at 7:31 PM PST - 26 comments

Recipe Puppy, a new Recipe Search Engine [via mefi projects]
A recipe search engine that lets you search for recipes by ingredients. Simply put in the ingredients you have and the type of food you want, and the search engine will return the recipes you are closest to being able to make. You can also specify ingredients you don't have, and ingredients that absolutely must be included in the recipe. [more inside]posted by yuletide at 4:17 PM PST - 41 comments

It is apparent to me that Faith does have a brain, despite what the doctors have said. Even though it is generally believed that anencephalic babies are blind, deaf, and cannot feel touch or think... I don't believe that. Not at all. So little is known about the human brain and the only one who really knows what's going on is God. I truly believe that Faith can think and can feel my touch and hear my voice. I can't prove it but I feel like I just know. [images may be disturbing]posted by Joe Beese at 2:11 PM PST - 252 comments

Bill Moyers Journal, April 17, 2009 From crime beat reporter for the BALTIMORE SUN to award-winning screenwriter of HBO's critically-acclaimed The Wire, David Simon talks with Bill Moyers about inner-city crime and politics, storytelling and the future of journalism today.
Sorry for the one link post.posted by dougzilla at 1:01 PM PST - 23 comments

It's a simple story about a responsible owl, trying to raise a curious (human) son and a geeky (human) daughter in their giant treehouse while dealing with his longtime bear buddy (and honey researcher), Steve. Though it debuted, humbly enough, in the Cracked.com forums, Benjamin Driscoll's drolly sweet comic Daisy Owl soon gained a loyal following, earning a regular feature there (courtesy of David Wong) and routinely making the front pages of sites like Digg and Reddit. In March 2009, Driscoll went pro, quitting his job to work on the comic full-time and making Daisy Owl one of the few self-sufficient webcomics on the net. Its quirky, character-driven humor, focused mainly on children, friendship, and families, has earned more than a few comparisons to Calvin and Hobbes, as well as plenty of fan art. Highlights: Basement - Honey - Parenting - Shampoo - Skittle on the Moon - Nightmare - Movie Night - Thrift Store - Classic Dad - Wallpapersposted by Rhaomi at 11:50 AM PST - 24 comments

Sidi or Siddi is a "community of the descendants of African slaves and seamen, the ancestors of the Sidis came to India and Pakistan through sea trade with East Africa and the Persian Gulf around the 12th century." The slave trade between India and Africa predates the more infamous transatlantic slave trade by at least six centuries. They have a rich history which included controlling the only fort never to fall against the efforts of the British, Dutch and the Mughals. They have now, however, fallen into hard times . [more inside]posted by Lucubrator at 9:06 AM PST - 11 comments

Space-based Solar Power beamed down to earth sounds pretty far out, but the technology is further along than many suppose, the sun never sets in space, and space is a Saudi Arabia of unlimited energy for the nation with the technology to harness it. PG&E (California) in conjunction with SolarEn has announced a 200MW space solar project to be up by 2016.posted by stbalbach at 3:38 PM PST - 87 comments

Intended Consequences. It is estimated that 20,000 children were born as the result of rape during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide that claimed the lives of over 800,000 Tutsis. Many of these women also contracted HIV/AIDS as a result. Not only do the mothers have to live with memories of this incredibly horrible event, but they along with their children are shunned by other Tutsi survivors. [more inside]posted by itchylick at 12:28 PM PST - 22 comments

Who's Your Daddy?Atlantic Monthly staff writer Caitlin Flanagan considers the impact of father-daughter relationships and once again opines about the emotional inner life of adolescent girls. Building off Alec Baldwin's much-publicized voicemail invective to his 11 year-old daughter, Flanagan concludes that apart from the celebrity personages, the Baldwin feud embodied all the classic traits of filial love between men and their little girls: "amorous engagement, maternal jealousy, and paternal protectiveness."posted by zoomorphic at 12:02 PM PST - 49 comments

US Pole Dance Championships 2009 (no nudity, but possibly NSFW) It’s significant to understand that pole dancing is not stripping. This misconception prevents pole dancing from becoming something every woman should be able to enjoy. Pole dancing is a sensual athletic dance form that demands coordination, flexibility and physical strength. Like the Jane Fonda workout combined with Cirque du Soleil.posted by ColdChef at 11:11 AM PST - 52 comments

The globe’s networked ecologies of food, water, energy, and waste have established new infrastructures and forms of urbanism. While these ecologies exist at the service of our contemporary lifestyles, they have typically remained hidden from view and from the public conscience. Infranet Lab is studying the shifting / changing conditions. [more inside]posted by netbros at 7:47 AM PST - 2 comments

Eagle Cam in Sutton, Oklahoma. Only one egg (out of three laid) has hatched this year, but the single eaglet is doing well, and both parents are keeping a close eye on his (her?) progress. Live during the day, and the day's tape is replayed at night, Oklahoma time, for folks tuning in late.
warning - can be addictive.
Previously, in Maine.posted by yhbc at 7:14 AM PST - 15 comments

Next Nature is the nature caused by human culture. The technological world has become so intricate and uncontrollable that it has become a nature of its own. Scientific research into nanotechnology, genetic manipulation, ambient intelligence, tissue engineering... all of these young research fields radically interfere with our sense of what is ‘natural’. Here's a visual introduction into next nature. [more inside]posted by netbros at 7:12 AM PST - 13 comments

4,500 additional pages omitted from Flaubert's 500-page Madame Bovary have been released online (in French). "The site – www.bovary.fr – contains not only the published text and images of the barely legible manuscripts but interactive controls which allow the reader to re-instate passages corrected or cut by Flaubert or his publishers." It took "between three and 10 hours to decipher a single page of Flaubert's writing," done mostly by volunteers from around the world.posted by stbalbach at 6:35 AM PST - 39 comments

Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness presentation at Google.JON KABAT-ZINN, PH.D., is founding Executive Director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is also the founding director of its renowned Stress Reduction Clinic and Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He teaches mindfulness and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in various venues around the world.posted by RussHy at 6:18 AM PST - 12 comments

Seekingarrangement.com is a website for would-be sugar daddies and sugar babies (no, not the candy). It claims 300,000 registered users. Here's a New York Timesarticle from last week about the site (and a Globe and Mailarticle from '07).posted by box at 12:41 PM PST - 61 comments

New music service We Are Hunted aims to create charts of emerging music tracks. They aggregate the buzz from social networks, forums, music blogs, torrents, P2P networks and Twitter. In the artists section you can comment about what you're hearing.posted by netbros at 10:38 PM PST - 15 comments

All things yoni - "yOni is a women's circle in cyberspace. a place to honour, empower, share, support and celebrate all that is woman." Might be considered NSFW (vulva-themed handicrafts)posted by UbuRoivas at 3:59 PM PST - 69 comments

The sentence is a lonely place. "The sentence, with its narrow typographical confines, is a lonely place, the loneliest place for a writer, and the temptation for the writer to get out of one sentence as soon as possible and get going on the next sentence is entirely understandable. In fact, the conditions in just about any sentence soon enough become (shall we admit it?) claustrophobic, inhospitable, even hellish. But too often our habitual and hasty breaking away from one sentence to another results in sentences that remain undeveloped parcels of literary real estate, sentences that do not feel fully inhabitated and settled in by language. So many of the sentences we confront in books and magazines look unfinished and provisional, and start to go to pieces as soon as we gawk at and stare into them. They don’t hold up. Their diction is often not just spare and stark but bare and miserly."posted by plexi at 2:27 PM PST - 41 comments

The Torture Colony. In a remote part of Chile, an evil German evangelist built a utopia whose members helped the Pinochet regime perform its foulest deeds... [i]nvestigations by Amnesty International and the governments of Chile, Germany, and France, as well as the testimony of former colonos who, over the years, managed to escape the colony, have revealed evidence of terrible crimes: child molestation, forced labor, weapons trafficking, money laundering, kidnapping, torture, and murder. It may sound like the farfetched plot of Saw VII (or something out of Kafka) but it's horrifyingly true. [Previously]posted by dersins at 1:28 PM PST - 38 comments

Father Luis Barrios, Episcopalian priest, full professor and academic chair at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, was sent to federal prison five weeks ago, after being convicted of trespassing. He was arrested in November for pushing a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran about one mile past the gates of the Fort Benning military base in Georgia. Fort Benning is the home of The School of the Americas also known as "School for Dictators", "School of Assassins", and "Nursery of Death Squads". SOAW campaigns to close this School which has the distinction of providing murderers for Latin American Regimes.posted by adamvasco at 10:27 AM PST - 48 comments

"We used to find teeth in the yard. We used to find wigs, glasses, guns. Everything we found in the yard…nobody came back for them, though." May Timpano describes her life in the house under the rollercoaster where she and her boyfriend, rollercoaster operator Fred Moran, lived for 36 years in the former Kensington Hotel which had the Thunderbolt rollercoaster built around it in 1925. The house -- the model for Alvy Singer's childhood home in Annie Hall -- burned in 1991 and the roller coaster wasrazed in 2000.posted by jessamyn at 8:48 AM PST - 15 comments

April 16

"What is it that certain people say or do during a job interview that makes them stand out? Why do some people struggle to find work, while others land a job in no time? I wanted to know, and the only way to find out was to experience the interview from the other side of the table." 22 tips, with video, at How To Nail An Interview.posted by ShawnStruck at 10:22 PM PST - 66 comments

Iraq air raids hit mostly women and children. "Air strikes and artillery barrages have taken a heavy toll among the most vulnerable of the Iraqi people, with children and women forming a disproportionate number of the dead. Analysis carried out for the research group Iraq Body Count (IBC) found that 39 per cent of those killed in air raids by the US-led coalition were children and 46 per cent were women. Fatalities caused by mortars, used by American and Iraqi government forces as well as insurgents, were 42 per cent children and 44 per cent women."posted by homunculus at 5:20 PM PST - 21 comments

As we explained in the Section 2340A Memorandum, "pain and suffering" as used in Section 2340 is best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of "pain" as distinguished from "suffering"... The waterboard, which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever, does not, in our view inflict "severe pain or suffering". Even if one were to parse the statute more finely to treat "suffering" as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe sufering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering.

Demon Denim. Feeding off a earlier column in the WSJ by Daniel Akst, who wrote, "no fabric has ever been so insidiously effective at undermining national discipline," conservative columnist George Will takes up the (denim-free) banner in the crusade to rid America of "the plague of that ubiquitous fabric, which is symptomatic of deep disorders in the national psyche."posted by Liver at 10:44 AM PST - 158 comments

"The Cleveland Tourism Board gave me 14 million dollars about 8 months ago to make a promotional video to bring people to Cleveland. As usual, I waited till the last minute and I ended up having to shoot and edit it in about an hour yesterday afternoon. I probably should have invested more time."posted by dhammond at 10:43 AM PST - 50 comments

The Changing Racial Dynamics of the War on Drugs. The Sentencing Project has just released a report (pdf) finding that, for the first time in 20 years, the number of Black Americans in state prison for drug offenses has fallen. Between 1999 and 2005, the number of White drug offenders in state prisons rose about 43 percent, while the number of Black offenders declined by 22 percent. One cause may be a rise in the use of drug courts, which are locally administered programs that divert offenders into treatment rather than incarceration. The Sentencing Project has a recent report (pdf) on this issue as well.posted by lunit at 8:11 AM PST - 32 comments

It is not certain whether this interview will be aired in the US because cable and satellite providers have declined to work with Al Jazeera English.
The interview was conducted by Avi Lewis for his program "Fault Lines".posted by adamvasco at 3:56 AM PST - 73 comments

April 15

Paper Cuts tracks U.S. newspaper layoffs and buyouts. Roughly 24,000 jobs lost in 2008-09. It includes all newspaper jobs, from editor to ad rep, reporter to marketing, copy editor to pressman, design to carrier, and anyone else who works for a newspaper. Mapped papers that have closed or stopped publishing a print edition.posted by netbros at 10:19 PM PST - 24 comments

Mere days after asserting his state's "sovereignty" from an "oppressive" Federal government, Governor Rick Perry stands before an angry crowd at Austin City Hall and announces that Texas may once again secede from the Union. "There's a lot of different scenarios," Perry said. "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we're a pretty independent lot to boot." [more inside]posted by Avenger at 7:05 PM PST - 315 comments

BigBrotherFilter:Estimates place the number of CCTV cameras in the UK at 4.2 million, but how can these images all possibly be watched? Researches in Turkey have an answer: an eye-gaze tracking system placed on the CCTV operators themselves which can "then automatically produces a summary of the CCTV video sequences they have missed during their shift". [more inside]posted by tybeet at 4:14 PM PST - 32 comments

"Cochon 555 is a culinary event featuring 5 chefs, 5 pigs, and 5 winemakers in a friendly competition for a cause. Each chef will prepare a 70 pound heritage pig from head to toe for 200 enthusiasts." (flash site) [more inside]posted by mkb at 9:11 AM PST - 18 comments

Kari Ferrell is on Salt Lake City's Most Wanted List. Apparently Ms. Ferrell has moved from Utah to New York and has been hanging out with the hipsters in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Within the space of a half-hour, Ms. Ferrell was peppering him with questions about his sexual history—how many women he’d slept with and so on. “She was coming on to me, and I was super into it for the first part of it,” he said. “I realized I could have fun after work—but then I was like, ‘Let me check this girl out.’” posted by R. Mutt at 8:56 AM PST - 147 comments

April 14

Roadside Architecture. "I have been passionate about commercial architecture and roadside related things all my life. I grew up in California but New York City has been my home since 1980. I started this website in 2000 simply as a way to organize my own photos. Since then, it has become a bit of an obsession and grown to well over 1,000 pages." flickr. blog. [more inside]posted by mwhybark at 11:38 PM PST - 11 comments

If society fell apart this afternoon I’d be willing to bet you’d die. You’ve spent your life learning how to ‘cut and paste’ or how to master E. Honda’s Hundred Handslap in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but when the world comes crashing down and you’re hungry, you’ll be eating crunchy Ramen noodles and wondering how your own pee tastes. Lets face it. You’d die. This blog is to help those plan for their escape from the collapsing rubble of our society."Survive the Apocalypse.posted by netbros at 9:01 PM PST - 60 comments

NYT article 4/12/09 Interesting article about the Dead on the eve of their tour. Bonus: link on the sidebar that shows reader photos. Find your friends. Or not.posted by mnb64 at 8:29 PM PST - 25 comments

Is the west thwarting Arab plans for reform?Few Muslims now invest much hope in the democratic western powers (essentially the US, Britain and France) that back the rulers who oppress them, even if, against the odds, they still admire “western” values, science and culture. There is no endemic or intrinsic conflict between Christians and Muslims. Rather, the root of the problem is that a majority of Muslims is convinced that the west – interested only in a stability based on regional strongmen, the security of Israel and cheap oil – is engaged in a war against Islam and is bent on denying them the freedoms it claims for itself. That is why it is so self-defeating to collude in tyranny as ostensibly a lesser evil than political Islam.[more inside]posted by kliuless at 6:54 PM PST - 32 comments

Dick Cavett conjures up the great Slydini.Part 1., Part 2. "It was like seeing a man walk up a wall. Nothing prepared you for it. Right at the start, a solid, heavy silver dollar, held before my eyes, vanished into thinnest air. And by no method I knew of. Certainly no sleeves. The two hours flew too quickly."posted by Xurando at 3:03 PM PST - 20 comments

137 Uncomfortable Plot Summaries of a wide variety of movies, TV series and even a couple books, from varying points of view (whatever is the most uncomfortable). A treasure trove of pop culture redefinition.posted by wendell at 12:06 PM PST - 425 comments

There is a jagged fissure of insanity which runs through the heart of the EVE playerbase, a kind of feverish bad crazy that you simply don't find in other online games. Oh, sure, everyone knows a tale or two about the Starcraft player who stayed awake for 50 hours and died from exhaustion because he wouldn't stop gaming, or the legions of relatively mundane overweight basement-dwelling nerds that populate the other MMOs that have a lack of perspective that comes from playing in virtual worlds too much. Some people like to point to South Korea's Starcraft tournaments as a sign of abnormality, but sporting leagues are a 'healthy' expression of hobby activity by most standards. No, if you want utter madness, you have to look to EVE.

Richard Renaldi is doing some pretty wonderful photography. For several years, he’s been using a large format 8x10 camera (with the hood and everything), profiling people in ways that feel both intimate and authentic.
His first book, “Figure and Ground,” is a collection of portraits and landscapes that capture, with a quiet intensity, a diverse cross-section of the country.
His newest book, “Fall River Boys,” is a sort of chronicle of a decaying American town, and the (mostly) young inhabitants who are either unable or unwilling to leave. (He and his partner even launched their own press to get it published.) [more inside]posted by mapalm at 9:36 AM PST - 8 comments

The Guardian has taken the unusual step of publishing the same article in English & in Italian because the Italian media will not tell the truth about Berlusconi.
The tainted clown that heads Italy has accused newspapers and television stations of slandering him and damaging the country’s reputation by highlighting his alleged faux pas.Silvio's Shadow an interesting article from the Colombia Journal of Review cached archives shows how Berlusconi uses Journalism as a political weapon. [more inside]posted by adamvasco at 2:40 AM PST - 48 comments

April 13th is Seamus Heaney's 70th birthday, and to celebrate, the Irish press have honored him in many ways. A Catholic from Northern Ireland, his early poems reflected his upbringing on a farm, but his later poems (and time in the States) spoke powerfully of 'the Troubles.' I thought he deserved a mention in the Blue. [more inside]posted by dbmcd at 8:06 PM PST - 13 comments

Polio: A Virus’ Struggle is a Graphic Novella by James Weldon.
When we eradicate a disease, do we ever think about how it may effect the disease?
Learn all about the history of Poliomyelitis, as he tells his story to the group.posted by vertigo25 at 9:15 AM PST - 16 comments

"Josh and Nina are two friends. Every day, they each take a photo. Operating under a pact of absolute secrecy, neither knows what the other is working on. Each morning, they post their photos on Minty Forest side by side."
Despite the diversity of their subjects the individual days often have consistency, consonance, coincidence, congruence or discord.posted by Mitheral at 8:12 AM PST - 13 comments

Cooking with Dog is a fantastic Japanese cooking show on YouTube - but don't worry, they don't actually cook dogs. It's just that in Japan, an internet cooking show comprised of short videos of simple Japanese recipes just wouldn't be interesting unless it was narrated by a talking poodle. Katsudon / Oden / Gyudonposted by billysumday at 7:11 AM PST - 26 comments

Around Cape Horn - if you've ever wished for an authentic glimpse into the bygone era of the majestic age of sailing, this is it - a rare 1929 true adventure film about sailing a four-masted commercial barque around the Cape Horn during a huge gale. It was shot with a hand-cranked camera by Captain Irving Johnson who offers a spirited narration. 36 minutes, B&Wposted by madamjujujive at 8:28 PM PST - 29 comments

On the subject of returning British television classics.. Doctor Who returns tonight for the first of four specials to be aired this year in lieu of a proper series. British MeFites watch David Tenant run through the sand as I type this while others wait anxiously for other means of viewership to become available. [more inside]posted by mediocre at 11:14 AM PST - 47 comments

A native of Barcelona, Spain, Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu moved to New York in 2002 to pursue a career in photography. Adriana has been capturing the lives of young Puerto Rican women and their families in Spanish Harlem, NYC. There is a hardness that characterizes Life on the Block. [more inside]posted by netbros at 8:40 AM PST - 6 comments

Motownship, the combination of Cape Town township music, traditional African instruments and motown tunes, is the topic of this Radio 4 documentary. While purists - both of the African music and motown persuasion - may think this is just a gimmick, it is hard not to have a smile on your face when you listen to the tunes on Abavuki's album Africa Got Soul.
What is even more amazing is the background of these musicians - kids who grew up in one of the most deprived townships in South Africa, Langa. To check out the band for yourself, see them playing at the legendary Mama Africa club, via youtube (this is not a motown tune from the album).posted by Megami at 3:03 AM PST - 10 comments

In Bendito Machine, shadow people exploit shadow machines for their shadow enjoyment. Shadow death (justice?) is brought about in shadowly humorous ways. [Previously, but now with its own site and more installments (I, II, III).]posted by pokermonk at 7:51 PM PST - 4 comments

In the midst of increasing concern over dependence on URL shorteners, Digg perversely manifests one worst-case scenario, the DiggBar. Put your favorite website's URL into the Digg Bar, Digg provides a shortened version of the URL, handy for use in Twitter and other tiny media. What's the downside? Well, these days any link you follow from Digg has Digg's branding wrapped around it. Hey presto, Google suddenly looks like Digg property. [more inside]posted by ardgedee at 12:45 PM PST - 85 comments

The Local food movement's celebration over the white house garden was short lived. The White House has receive a letter from the Mid America CropLife Association, expressing disappointment that Obamas planted an organic garden. "As you go about planning and planting the White House garden, we respectfully encourage you to recognize the role conventional agriculture plays in the U.S in feeding the ever-increasing population, contributing to the U.S. economy and providing a safe and economical food supply. America's farmers understand crop protection technologies are supported by sound scientific research and innovation."posted by Xurando at 11:05 AM PST - 101 comments

"Once upon a time there was a game that nobody ever played, sitting on the floor in the back room of an empty arcade. The game was full of life and strife, mega-monsters and robot fights. We Are The Strange was the title. Now meet the players who live inside, idle."The story of filmmaker M dot Strange and his solo indie masterpiece, We AreThe Strange. [more inside]posted by Rhaomi at 7:15 PM PST - 5 comments

David JC MacKay's "Sustainable Energy -- Without the Hot Air" is available from his website for free download. Lots of numbers without being too heavy. (via)posted by greensweater at 8:35 AM PST - 12 comments

Tenzin Bob Thurman became a Tibetan monk at age 24. He's a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University, the first American ordained by the Dalai Lama. Here is his TED talk. If you are really interested in Tibetan Buddhism, check out his many podcasts.posted by RussHy at 7:50 AM PST - 30 comments

The Case Against Homework.Does assigning fifty math problems accomplish any more than assigning five? Is memorizing word lists the best way to increase vocabulary—especially when it takes away from reading time? And what is the real purpose behind those devilish dioramas? Sara Bennett wants to stop homework. Here she explains why (pdf).posted by lunit at 7:50 AM PST - 180 comments

Taser use in law enforcement has been under increased scrutiny in recent years, especially following the death of Robert Dziekanski in a Vancouver airport last year after being Tasered by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (previously). Now the CBC and Canadian Press have sifted through over 5,000 incident reports to create a RCMP Taser use database, tracking use of tasers by Canada's federal law enforcement by province, incident, year or stuns used. [more inside]posted by Shepherd at 6:11 AM PST - 36 comments

Oh noes, those gay newlyweds are causing Biblical rainstorms!! An ominous new TV ad by the National Organization for Marriage -- who helped pass Prop. 8 in California -- features a "rainbow coalition" of folks to warn America that marriage equality advocates want to "take away" your "freedom" by pushing the issue "far beyond same-sex couples." Unfortunately for NOM, the profound seriousness of this threat has been undermined by a leak of audition reels for the ad.posted by digaman at 12:46 PM PST - 204 comments

Metafilter is certainly no stranger to music mashups, or even live music mashups, but a few artists are taking things a step further with live music and video mashups. Not prerecorded mashups of live music and video, but live performances of DJs (often calling themselves "VJs") mashing up music and video together on the fly. [more inside]posted by Grimp0teuthis at 12:42 PM PST - 14 comments

In May 1995, the American government's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) made an attempt to disrupt the supply chain of methamphetamine precursors, such as pseudoephedrine, by shutting down two major suppliers of the precursors under authority granted by the Domestic Chemical Diversion Control Act. Was it successful? Only temporarily, according to new research by Carlos Dobkin and Nancy Nicosia. (via)posted by Pants! at 11:29 AM PST - 47 comments

Graffiti Project in Kenya Slums — more than a year after he took the original pictures, French photo artist JR has returned to Kibera, Kenya. He was reunited with the women who had accepted to be part of his WOMEN project at the end of 2007 (previously). 2000 square meters of Kibera slum rooftops have been covered with photos of their eyes and faces. Most of the women will have their own photos on their own rooftop and the material used is water resistant so that the photo itself will protect the fragile houses in the heavy rain season. They are on view from the railway line that passes above them, and will be visible for Google Earth. (via Africa.Visual_Media)posted by netbros at 9:10 AM PST - 11 comments

Stuff Accountants Like -- As the US tax return deadline approaches, take an inside and humorous look at the professionals who you either love, hate, or whose revenue recognition principles you may blame for the mortgage crisis. Or maybe, perhaps, pity? posted by CPAGirl at 6:56 AM PST - 10 comments

The PhilSci Archive is an electronic archive for preprints in the philosophy of science. The goal of the Archive is to promote communication in the field by the rapid dissemination of new work.posted by aniola at 8:15 PM PST - 4 comments

Beyond even the outrageously broad "state secrets" privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and -- even if what they're doing is blatantly illegal and they know it's illegal -- you are barred from suing them unless they "willfully disclose" to the public what they have learned. - Glenn Greenwald. [more inside]posted by Joe Beese at 12:18 PM PST - 102 comments

SpaceCollective. Where forward thinking terrestrials exchange ideas and information about the state of the species, their planet and the universe, living the lives of science fiction today. A growing number of universities, architecture and design schools are conducting projects on this site. Hundreds of art treasures, educational videos and narratives are found in their galleries. Every SpaceCollective member is provided with a personal time capsule, preserving their contributions for the edification of each other as well as future times and beings.posted by netbros at 8:49 AM PST - 5 comments

One for the fans.[A]t the Fantastic Fest Star Trek event at the Alamo Draughthouse Theater in Austin, Texas on Monday night. Star Trek filmmakers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof kicked things off by telling the crowd of around 200, that they would be seeing the Star Trek preview after Wrath of Khan. Two minutes in to the showing of TWOK, the film appeared to have ‘melted’ and the guys came back out on the stage and appeared to be stalling for time while the film was fixed…and then, wearing a ball cap, Leonard Nimoy came out in front of the audience holding a film can.
Nimoy noted to the crowd that it just didn’t seem fair that people in Australia were the fist to see the film and asked them "wouldn’t you rather see the new movie?"posted by caddis at 7:46 AM PST - 111 comments

We all know of the importance and impact that CBGB's had on the early East Coast punk scene. I could go and link to a bunch you tube videos, obituaries, and other assorted blogs about my favorite acts that had played there over the years. And while CBGB's is gone, why I don't I just let you take a virtual tour of the place.posted by peewinkle at 1:42 PM PST - 45 comments

At least 150 dead, 1.500 injuried and 50.000 displaced by a magnitude 6.3 Richter scaleearthquake that struck Abruzzo and center Italy at 01:32:42 UTC on April 6th.The damage is very severe, the little village of Onna, existing since at least year 1178, was completely destroyed and the city of
L'Aquila (pop 70.000) was severly damaged. The city hospital was rendered 90% unusable, allegedly 50% of all of the city buildings are now considered unsafe. Hundreds of pictures have been sent on the internet by locals, while controversy ensues on a early warning by an italian scientist (indicted a few days ago for spreading rumors about an upcoming quake), who claims that his Radon gas detectors signaled an anomaly that may have been validated by a more extensive networks of detectors and may have saved lifes.posted by elpapacito at 11:04 AM PST - 76 comments

A little old, but chock full of enough wackadoodle quotes to be your morning cup of head-go-boom-iness. FOX News on Mr. Rogers and his effect on "the narcissistic society he gave birth to": "This evil, evil man has now ruined a generation of kids." "Do you think that Mr. Rogers [...] ruined a crop of our newest, youngest generation?" "Instead of telling them 'you're special, you're great', why didn't he say, 'there's a lot of room for improvement, keep working on yourself'?" [more inside]posted by WCityMike at 9:00 AM PST - 191 comments

April 5

Rocks from Heaven “…A party of the inhabitants of the town of Casas Grandes, as a matter of curious speculation, commenced excavating in the old ruins there. One more fortunate than the others drifted into a large room, in the middle of which there appeared to be a kind of tomb made of adobe-brick. Curiosity led this bold knight of the crowbar to renew his excavations, he found a large mass of meteoric iron in the middle of the tomb, carefully and curiously wrapped with a kind of coarse linen.” [more inside]posted by various at 9:23 PM PST - 21 comments

Under Pennsylvanian state law, it's illegal to sell containers if the store owner "knows or should reasonably know" that the buyer intends to use them to package drugs. A confidential informant entered a convenience store to buy tiny ziplock bags at about 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2007. After making the purchase the Philadelphia PD Narcotics Field Unit raided the store for selling drug paraphernalia destroying the store's security system in the process and allegedly stealing money, batteries, cigarettes and food among other items. He's not the first one to make this complaint either.posted by Talez at 6:24 PM PST - 73 comments

Read all about it! Discover all the news! Read all about it! Track down all the clues!
With interesting people there's a mystery to be solved! An adventure is unfolding, so why not get involved? Come on andREAD ALL ABOUT IT.
Young Chris is left an old coach house by his missing uncle. As he and his two friends fuddle with the lock, a strange figure watches. The kids do not yet know the building is the entrance to a mystery that spans time and space! Aided by Otto the IBM Selectric robot typewriter and Theta the spooky as hell talking viewscreen, they will find that the concerns of an alien tyrant reach into the government of their own town. (24 of 40 15-minute episodes, including the entire first season, of this early-80s TV Ontario-produced "educational" show are on YouTube.) [more inside]posted by JHarris at 12:37 PM PST - 20 comments

If you’ve got extra kitchenware about is never used to cook or contains food anymore, here are some (low calorie!) ways to use it again. If you’ve kicked your caffeine habit, your metal coffeepots can becomelamps, or your teapot can morph into a camel. Other items of kitchenware can become recycled toys. [more inside]posted by orange swan at 10:26 AM PST - 7 comments

"Shown backwards it is a heroic film about human experience: A man trapped in the logic of ghosts, trapped in a grayscale 2-D flat world, a photograph inside history, frozen in spectral finity: is unfrozen, and is lured outside of a maze where both his wife and son proceed to ‘undouble’ him and assist him in his war with his self and is finally able to drive away from the Overlook, from the lunarscape of this unreal summit and into a perfect mirror, earthmade."

Field Force to Lhasa 1903-04 Captain Cecil Mainprise accompanied General Sir Francis Younghusband's expedition to Tibet in 1903. He wrote 50 letters home which trace the expedition’s progress into Tibet. Read this insider's account on the day they were written some 105 years later. Final post is 18 November 2009. [Via]posted by Abiezer at 2:36 PM PST - 8 comments

Ward Churchill reinstated. A jury has found that The University of Colorado wrongfully dismissed the controversial professor, author, and activist. After a day and a half of deliberation, they cited the tenured professor's infamous post-9/11 essay, wherein he compared technocrats who died in the World Trade Center to "little Eichmanns," as the "substantial or motivating" factor in the University's decision to fire him and awarded him $1.
(previously here and here.)posted by inoculatedcities at 12:21 PM PST - 54 comments

In the early 1980s, Roni Horn travelled to Iceland and lived alone for a few months in the (supposedly haunted) lighthouse at Dyrhólaey. While there, she made rocky, earthy drawings. They formed the first volume of a currently incomplete, abstract encyclopedia of the country [flash navigation] which has now progressed to include beautiful photographs of hot pools, glaciers, lava and rivers. A river's surface has appeared in different guises within a university. She has even made a library of water in a little Icelandic town. However, those currently in or near London can visit an exhibition in Tate Modern. [more inside]posted by paperpete at 10:08 AM PST - 7 comments

Novelist Chris Paling diary of his time spent on 'Beirut', a high-intensity hospital ward for the treatment of digestive diseases - where a third of patients are there due to the effects of long term alcoholism.posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:43 AM PST - 58 comments

"Soon were the lofty peaks of Corcyra lost to view;
We coasted along Epirus, and coming to the Chaonian
Harbour, we drew near Buthrotum, that hill city."
- The Aenid - Book III, Virgil (trans. Cecil Day Lewis)

"The editor's guidelines are as follows: First, remember the reader, and respect demands that we should not casually use words that are likely to offend. Second, use such words only when absolutely necessary to the facts of a piece, or to portray a character in an article; there is almost never a case in which we need to use a swearword outside direct quotes. Third, the stronger the swearword, the harder we ought to think about using it.Finally, never use asterisks, which are just a cop-out." - Swearing in The Guardian: A chartposted by Artw at 11:18 AM PST - 31 comments

Dominated by the Villain, […] Fleming’s woman has already been previously conditioned to domination, life for her having assumed the role of the villain. The general scheme is (1) the girl is beautiful and good; (2) has been made frigid and unhappy by severe trials suffered in adolescence; (3) this has conditioned her to the service of the Villain; (4) through meeting Bond she appreciates human nature in all its richness; (5) Bond possesses her but in the end loses her.A fantastically in-depth analysis of the sexual politics of James Bond. With charts!posted by HumanComplex at 11:04 AM PST - 61 comments

...[Change of scene. We are looking out of a car window; it is raining, or has recently rained. Shops go by.] I treated myself to a taxi. I rode home through the city streets! There wasn't a street--there wasn't a building--that wasn't connected to some memory in my mind. There I was buying a suit with my father. There I was having an ice-cream soda after school. When I finally came in, Debby was home from work. And I told her everything about my dinner with André

The Tauntaun sleeping bag. Adorable April Fool's joke from ThinkGeek triggers flood of demand. "We have decided to TRY and bring this to life. We have no clue if the suits at Lucasfilms will grant little ThinkGeek a license."posted by CunningLinguist at 8:54 AM PST - 48 comments

Between 16 April - 13 May the worlds largest democracy will go into action. Being India the logistics are mind boggling. Over 700 million eligible voters who will vote in over 700,000 polling stations for 1,055 political parties. The BBC goes on to explain what makes Indian elections special. University of Maryland has Forecasts and Analysis and Trends in Indian Election Politics has both insight and an interesting blog roll. As Indian Politics are more than usually corrupt and thuggish there is website dedicated to information about candidates with a criminal history. Sadly in spite of this great democratic exercise, repression of speech and miscarriage of justice will probably still be around for a while.posted by adamvasco at 7:39 AM PST - 6 comments

The Iowa Supreme Court has just unanimously declared the state's ban on gay marriage to be unconstitutional. "The decision strikes the language from Iowa Code section 595.2 limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman. It further directs that the remaining statutory language be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage." (full summary PDF) The ruling effectively legalizes same-sex marriage in the state of Iowa.posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:35 AM PST - 221 comments

Richard Dawkins was recently invited to speak at the University of Oklahoma’s Darwin 2009 series of lectures on March 6th, 2009. The speech to be entitled "The Purpose of Purpose" quickly grew in popularity and even had to be moved to a larger venue to accommodate the quickly increasing crowd. Of course, word eventually reached Todd Thompson. Friction ensues. [more inside]posted by 5imian at 4:52 AM PST - 103 comments

Soup Over Bethlehem - The mloukhieh in the soup bowl represents the shared national heritage and the meal itself becomes a gastronomic anchoring of a Palestinian identity in eternal flux. [via]posted by tellurian at 6:02 PM PST - 17 comments

Apparently there's at least a 51% chance of God's existence. It starts out 50/50, like with pets. You have, say, either a dog or a cat. It's a 50/50 chance that it's one or the other, just like it's 50/50 that there's a God or not. Well, we exist. You exist. The earth exists. That nudges it up to 51%. If I understand this youtube gentleman. Hilarious exercise in smug delivery of ironclad logic.posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 8:31 AM PST - 126 comments

Robert Beck was a pimp. "I got out of it because I was old. I did not want to be teased, tormented and brutalized by young whores." While working as an insecticide salesman, one of his customers suggested he write an autobiography. "Iceberg Slim" wrote Pimp: The Story Of My Life in 3 months. It was the beginning of a literary career that made him one of the largest selling African-American authors of all time. He died on April 30, 1992 - one day after the start of the Los Angeles riots. (previously)posted by Joe Beese at 7:26 AM PST - 40 comments

The Uprising Of The Ants: "Alexandra Achenbach and Susanne Foitzik from Ludwig Maximillians Universty in Munich found that some of the kidnapped workers don't bow to the whims of their new queen. Once they have matured, they start killing the pupae of their captors, destroying as many as two-thirds of the colony's brood. "posted by The Whelk at 6:49 AM PST - 32 comments

April 1

Around the World in 80 Telescopes Starting at 09:00 UT on April 3 (figure out what time that is for you here) join in for a 24 hour webcast visiting 80 of the world's astronomical observatories. What are the astronomers up to? What is it like to spend a night at a telescope? [more inside]posted by kms at 11:44 PM PST - 4 comments

A philosophy professor takes on the financial system. Or perhaps that should read - a philosophy professor's take on the financial system. Daniel Cloud, teacher of philosophy at Princeton University and a founding partner in two hedge funds, makes the case in a recent opinion piece that "... complicated explanations about derivatives, regulatory failure, and so on are beside the point. ... The truth is that ... models are most useful when they are little known or not universally believed. They progressively lose their predictive value as we all accept and begin to bet on them."posted by woodblock100 at 8:31 PM PST - 28 comments

My April 1st spidey sense was tingling like crazy, but I guess it's true if it was in Time Magazine, that bastion of serious journalism, where Time 100 nominee LeBron James nominated Ohio businessman Jay Schottenstein for the next Time 100 because he, "supported the translation and elucidation of the Talmud Bavli into English, Hebrew and French."
Now if only Jews could play basketball...posted by ericbop at 5:17 PM PST - 35 comments

The British Expeditionary Force first faced the German troops at the Battle of Mons on August 23rd of 1914. The British forces accounted well for themselves, despite being heavily outnumbered. This miraculous victory was due to the aid of shining angelic figures which held the Germans back during the retreat, according to numerous accounts of those who saw the event. There is just one problem with this wonderful story. [more inside]posted by winna at 4:21 PM PST - 24 comments

There was no way to simply say, "I read a really bad description in this book last night." I had to scan it and share it for you to understand just how bad it truly, truly was. It is the sort of bad that causes pain and must be shared with other people so you can feel better.Part 1, Part 2. This really is prose so purple that it verges into the infra-red. Some NSFW descriptive naughtiness.posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:45 AM PST - 149 comments

"Get a grip, man. you can't let this wash over you. You have no control over what happens right now. But you can do one thing. Get up on top of the fear. Get above it. "Louis C.K. ( previously ) is writing about his recent experience on a USO tour in the Middle East. It's funny and genuine, and he's a decent photographer. Also, Dino Stamatopoulos was there.posted by HumanComplex at 10:01 AM PST - 37 comments

"The idea that the state is an unwarranted assault on individual freedom is not a progressive one. This kind of libertarianism works to protect privilege by cloaking the advantages of the rich in the garb of personal autonomy, individual freedom and the “human right” to privacy." Or so says Professor Gearty in an article in the New Statesman.
Via David Miliband's blog, in which he also salutes the debunking of the 'myth' that people in Britain are captured "300 times a day on CCTV"posted by patricio at 8:14 AM PST - 114 comments

On Sunday, Karmanoia, one of Berlin's most interesting underground clubs, closed its doors for the last time. Although not as storied or well-known as Tacheles - also facing tough times - and easy to pass without noticing, Karmanoia had a loyal crowd of oddballs frequenting it, and was notable not just for its pirate-ship-like interior, but also for the full Labyrinth built into its upper portions. The club's funeral took place directly after locking the doors at midnight on Sunday, with an orchestra dressed like skeletons leading a parade to a nearby canal to bury the key in a watery grave. [more inside]posted by mannequito at 5:45 AM PST - 23 comments

The Guardian is moving entirely to Twitter. "Sceptics have expressed concerns that 140 characters may be insufficient to capture the full breadth of meaningful human activity, but social media experts say the spread of Twitter encourages brevity, and that it ought to be possible to convey the gist of any message in a tweet."posted by djgh at 3:15 AM PST - 50 comments

About MetaFilter

MetaFilter is a weblog that anyone can contribute a link or a comment to. A typical weblog is one person posting their thoughts on the unique things they find on the web. This website exists to break down the barriers between people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members.